By Antoine Lawson
Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

LIBREVILLE (Reuters) - Six people have died of a mystery illness in a part of Gabon where the deadly Ebola virus killed at least 66 people in 1996, the country's health minister said on Wednesday.

Troops were sent to the affected district in the north and officials appealed for calm from people terrified that it could be Ebola, whose fevered victims bleed to death and for which there is no known cure.

Health Minister Faustin Boukoubi told Reuters in Libreville that the virus had struck the village of Mekambo.

``There are at least six dead and the situation is getting worse,'' he said, without giving any more details.

Reports of the deaths, near the site of the Ebola outbreak 5 years ago, and the lack of an official explanation have set people on edge in the country of 1.2 million people on central Africa's Atlantic coast.

Ebola is passed on through contact with body fluids and begins with aches and fever similar to flu symptoms.

Only in the last stages--when the virus eats through the victim's veins and arteries causing massive internal haemorrhaging and blood to pour out of every orifice--is it clear that Ebola has struck.

There is no vaccine and no cure, and up to 70% of victims die within days.

The most recent major outbreak of Ebola killed more than 170 people in Uganda last year.

An epidemic in the town of Kikwit in the former Zaire is thought to have killed more than 250 people in 1995.

The disease was discovered in 1976 near the Ebola River in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.